THE NUMBER OF people 65 and older is expected to more than double worldwide, to about 1.5 billion by 2050 from 523 million last year, according to estimates from the United Nations. That means people 65 and over will soon outnumber children under 5 for the first time ever.

Many economists view such an exploding population of aged people not as an asset, but as a looming budget crisis. A Standard & Poor’s analysis warns that many countries are not prepared to cover the pension and health care costs of so many additional retirees; national debts could grow to double their gross domestic product. After all, by one estimate, treating dementia worldwide already costs more than $600 billion annually.

But researchers are betting that baby boomers, unlike generations past, will not go gentle into the good night of longterm care. The alternate scenario: older adults living independently for longer periods, creating a potentially huge market for technologies and services that promote wellness, mobility, autonomy and social connectivity.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AgeLab here, researchers trying to help product designers and marketers better understand older adults have created the Age Gain Now Empathy System, or Agnes.

At first glance, it may look like an elaborate jumpsuit. A helmet, attached by cords to a pelvic harness, cramps the wearer’s neck and spine. Yellow-paned goggles muddy vision. Plastic bands, running from the harness to each arm, clip the wingspan. Compression knee bands discourage bending. Plastic shoes, with uneven pads for soles, throw off the wearer’s center of gravity. Layers of surgical gloves make fingers feel awkward.

“Aging is a multidisciplinary phenomenon, and it requires new tools to look at,” says Joseph F. Coughlin, director of AgeLab. “Agnes is one of those tools.”

Many industries have shied away from marketing unfashionable demographic group that might doom their product with young and hip spenders. Now that Americans are living longer and more actively, companies are recognizing this market’s staying power .

Companies come to AgeLab to understand this new target audience, and often learn hard truths: many older adults don’t like products, like big-button phones, that telegraph agedness. “The reality is such that you can’t build an old man’s product, because a young man won’t buy it and an old man won’t buy it,” Professor Coughlin says.

The idea is to help companies design and sell age-friendly products much the way they did with environmentally friendly products. That means offering enticing features and packaging to appeal to a certain demographic without alienating other consumer groups.

Products ranging from wireless pillboxes that transmit patients’ medication use, to new financial services that help people plan for longer lives already constitute a multibillion-dollar market, industry analysts say. But there is a lot more room for growth.

“There is an enormous market opportunity to deliver technology and services that allow for wellness and prevention and lifestyle enhancement,” says Eric Dishman, the global director of health innovation at Intel .

“Whichever countries or companies are at the forefront of that are going to own the category.”

In his office in Beaverton, Oregon, Mr. Dishman demonstrates some prototypes, like a social networking system for senior housing centers, already being tested.

Last month, a group including Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Aegon said it had formed the Global Coalition on Aging, to help governments and industries better handle the age boom.

“Companies are starting to think about how they can be age friendly much the same way they have been thinking about how they could be environmentally friendly over the last couple of decades,” says Andy Sieg, the head of retirement services at Bank of America.

Intel and General Electric are jointly developing technologies to help older adults stay independent. They are already selling the Intel Health Guide, a home monitoring system that helps doctors remotely manage patients’ care.

There’s just one obstacle: Because of ageism, Mr. Dishman says, many retailers aren’t ready to make space for agefriendly products and many companies don’t even want to develop them.

“Life enhancement technology for boomers is a chicken-and-egg problem,” he says. Is “the market going to take the first plunge, or are companies going to create technologies without knowing whether we can sell it?”

He has been trying to have the U.S. Congress put the issue on the national agenda. The European Union, he says, has committed more than one billion euros to study technology and aging.

“What do we need to do for aging and gray technology to have the same urgency and investment that global warming and green technology have?” Mr. Dishman asks.

Ken Dychtwald, the C.E.O. of Age- Wave, a consulting organization, has been trying to rebrand aging . He’s coined a word - “middlescence” - to convey later life as a transformative stage, like adolescence, in which people have free time and an increased interest in trying new experiences.

The first of about 76 million baby boomers in the United States turned 65 in January. Their sheer numbers may attract industries that had earlier shied away, Mr. Dychtwald said.

In 2009, for example, baby-boomer households in the United States spent about $2.6 trillion, according to estimates from AgeWave based on a consumer expenditure survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“If you are a Fortune 100 company, or an inventor in a garage, where are you going to find another demographic that is that large, that robust in spending power, that open to new possibilities, and that underserved?” Mr. Dychtwald asks. “There’s nothing to rival it.”

So far very few companies have applied creative intelligence to understanding older adults and developing technologies, services, experiences and even new careers for them.

“Rather than viewing maturity as an opportunity to sell people a golf membership or an arthritis medicine,” he says, “since a person who turns 60 has another 20 years, why not create educational programs whereby people can be motivated to go out, learn new skills and have an encore?”


By NATASHA SINGER
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts



An M.I.T. lab designed Agnes, an old-agesimulating
suit, to help companies get a feel for their older customers’ needs.


Retailers have been slow to embrace products for the elderly. Reaching for groceries turns challenging in a suit that simulates old age. C.J. GUNTHER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES